


Nintendon'ts

by Omorka



Category: Atop the Fourth Wall, That Guy with the Glasses/Channel Awesome
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-10 21:49:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5602303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omorka/pseuds/Omorka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'90s Kid and '80s Dan are interrupted on a casual date by yet another villain hunting Linkara, and must figure out how to fight pixels with pixels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nintendon'ts

**Author's Note:**

> A Secret Santa Christ gift (albeit a late-ish one) for bookishlady242 on LJ (sorry, I don't know your AO3 handle!). Also my first attempt at writing '80s Dan. As with all my efforts in the At4W/TGWTG/CA fandoms, I'm just borrowing the characters for a moment, and making no implications about the RL web personalities who play and own them.

“Dude, you’re totally going to love _Clueless_!” ‘90s Kid insisted. “I mean, it doesn’t have any _guns_ in it, but it’s still _awesome_!” Fishing a keychain that was more chains than keys from his pocket, he reached for the doorknob of the apartment.

“Sure, I love teen comedies,” ‘80s Dan agreed with a toothy smile. “Remind me next time to sit you down for _The Breakfast Club_ ; there’s no guns in that one, either, but someone does have an intense crawl-space scene.”

“Sounds excellent!” ‘90s Kid crowed, throwing the door open.

In the entryway . . . something . . . flickered and glimmered, grey as smoke and pixillated as a bad porno. It was huge, filling the entryway from floor to ceiling, and no size at all; it was shapeless and had a thousand arms; it swirled madly and was completely still.

‘80s Dan took a reflexive step back. “That’s the color of a TV set tuned to a dead station,” he murmured under his breath.

“Bright blue?” ‘90s Kid replied, puzzled.

_I WOULD SPEAK WITH YOU, HUUUU-MAAN._ The words appeared in the center of their brains as if they had been blasted from a brass bell, though no air vibrated.

‘90s Kid slammed the door shut. “Nope,” he said very quietly, then shouted, “Run, Dan! Get out of here!”

The door blinked like a cursor, then vanished in a blur. A pair of appendages flickered in midair; one of them wrapped around ‘90s Kid’s left ankle, flinging him to the industrial carpet with a thump. He let out a sharp scream, then stifled it as the thing that was neither arm nor tentacle dragged him backwards.

“What the hell is that?” Dan asked, skidding to a stop and grabbing ‘90s Kid’s hand. “And why is it in Linkara’s apartment?”

“It’s a video game glitch from Pokemon,” ‘90s Kid answered frantically, scrabbling at the carpet with his free hand. “It grew up into a Lovecraftian outer god somehow, it took me over and then started vanishing everyone else in the world, and it’s supposed to be dead!” He reached for his shirt pocket, but was yanked away before he could find anything, leaving Dan precariously balanced on one foot and barely clinging to ‘90s Kid’s fingers.

_I AM NOT THAT ONE_ , the words said in the center of their skulls again. _I WOULD KNOW WHAT BECAME OF THE MISSING ONE. YOU WILL TELL ME._ Suddenly Dan’s hand was empty.

“Whoaaah!” ‘90s Kid tried to flip around in the air, but mostly succeeded in banging his arm against the doorframe as he was hauled through it. The appendage wrapped around his chest and tugged him into the shapeless thing in the doorway; he disappeared in a shower of static, and the door reappeared, as if it had never been gone.

“Kid!” Dan regained his balance and rushed forward, banging on the door. “Kid, are you okay? Linkara, dude with the voice, mad science guy, are any of you there?” His fists pummeled the door, unheard.

\---

He remembered. For so long - years, now - he’d tried to block it out, to let it fade into the unending static, but the memories flooded back, now, fuzzy but unmistakeable. He’d seen the world through pixel-rimmed eyes, heard the glitch speaking with his voice, felt it use his arms and hands like a puppeteer pushing his nerves from deep inside himself. His head had echoed with its thoughts, incomprehensible infinite chains of code filtered through his overworked neurons. Out of self-defense, he’d had to teach it to eat, to drink, to allow his body at least the semblance of sleep - although the Entity had never slept, and so neither had he, not really. There had been no dreams, only exhausted hallucinations.

This was the exact opposite of that. He wasn’t invaded; he was surrounded, pinned, imprisoned. The world was gone, and only the glitch remained. At least it was still only outside of him, though it was pressing down on every inch of his surface and every nerve of his brain.

_WHERE IS THE MISSING ONE?_ it said. Its words had no voicebox, came from no mouth; they rang like a cheaply made gong, like broken glass on a chalkboard. They filled the space that was no space, sourceless and directionless.

“Wherever one of you goes when it dies,” ‘90s Kid spat back.

_THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE,_ it replied. He detected no anger, no sorrow, no fear. _YOU ARE NOT CAPABLE OF HARMING ONE OF US, MUCH LESS KILLING ONE OF US. ONLY ONE OF YOU COULD EVEN MANAGE TO SCRATCH US._

“Yeah, I know,” he muttered bitterly. Raising his voice, he continued, “We didn’t kill the Entity. It decided to die.”

That seemed to surprise it. At least, the patterns in the static changed, and the pressure around him shifted slightly; it was easier to breathe for a moment, before it tightened back down on him. _WHY WOULD IT DO THAT?_ it asked, and the note of the gong in its voice sounded flat.

“Linkara explained to it that what it was doing was pointless,” ‘90s Kid replied, puffing as he tried to get more air. “That it wouldn’t be any more powerful than it was before if it absorbed the whole earth, and even if it was, that didn’t change anything. He - I don’t remember all of this part, it was glitching so much and I couldn’t keep everything straight, but I think he convinced it that at least death would be a new experience for it.”

The pressure tightened. _IF YOU ARE TELLING THE TRUTH, THAT WAS VERY FOOLISH OF IT,_ the voice said. _I MUST SEE FOR MYSELF._

Suddenly, it was very hard to think. ‘90s Kid tried to block the pressure with his will alone; being invaded like that again was too terrifying to even consider.

\---

‘80s Dan leaned against the wall of the apartment hallway, disheveled, his hands aching. “Why didn’t I write down Linkara’s phone number?” he grumbled. “At least I could find out if anyone’s there.” He was contemplating whether he could break in through one of the windows without being noticed, when his eyes fell to the lock on the door.

He hadn’t heard it click when ‘90s Kid had slammed it shut. Cautiously, he reached out and tried it. It turned, and the door seemed free.

“Okay,” he muttered to himself. “It’s a game glitch that gained sentience and became a god.” He squared his shoulders, running a hand across his head to smooth his ruffled hair back down. “I can handle this,” he insisted to himself. “I’ve been dealing with programing bugs and game glitches since before Pokemon was a gleam in Nintendo’s eye.” Carefully, he reached into his pocket and withdrew a squareish block of black plastic with a jutting cylindrical handle and a single red button, trailing a cord.

“Hold on!” he bellowed, flinging the door open. For a split second, the shapeless flickering filled his field of view and reflected off his glasses; as some portion of it started to turn towards him, he jabbed the connector end of the cord towards it.

It didn’t strike anything solid, but he felt a pressure shoving back at him, like the force between two like poles on a magnet. Dan set his jaw and pushed back; under his fingers, something clicked.

The static before his eyes swirled. Dan brought up the joystick and allowed himself a smile.

\---

The static tightened its grip on ‘90s Kid, both on his body and on his mind. He pushed back, frantic; every channel that the Entity had used in his brain, he tried to either shut down or block up with nonsense. Well, technically it was the dialogue from _Bloodgun #1/2_ , but awesome as that issue was, even he couldn’t claim that the characters’ exposition made much sense.

_DO NOT RESIST, HUUU-MAAAN,_ rang the words in his head. _IT WILL HURT MUCH MORE IF YOU CONTINUE TO KEEP FROM ME WHAT I SEEK._

“No, dude,” ‘90s Kid pleaded. “Not again.” He tried to keep the technobabble and blatant namedropping running at the back of his mind, but already he could feel a tendril snaking its way through his subconscious, searching for memories too bogus to contemplate.

He trembled as it chuckled at him, plucking a distant adolescent memory from the back of his brain. _HOW MUCH PORNOGRAPHY DOES ONE HUU-MAAN NEED?_

“As much as he wants,” said a familiar voice from somewhere off ahead and to the left. ‘90s Kid forced his eyes open and peered through the twisting haze of random pixels.

A group of pixels in the static took on color and solidity, forming a blocky bipedal form - turquoise torso, dark khaki legs, a flesh-colored cube for a head, and a dark patch on top that just barely managed to suggest a hat.

_WHAT._

The figure jumped, grabbing at a string of dark brown dots that similarly swam into solidity, and swung heavily into the swirl that surrounded ‘90s Kid, grabbing him and peeling him out of the sparkling miasma. As the character landed - on what, ‘90s Kid couldn’t tell - he let him go and turned back towards the approximate location of the voice.

_NOT A GOOD CHOICE FOR A FIGHT,_ it said, although something about the clanging sounded faintly amused. The fog in front of them opened up, revealing a cave-like space with static walls; vortices with suggestions of arms, or maybe tentacles, spun out of the clouds and disappeared again.

“You’re right,” said the character; his voice was now recognizable as ‘80s Dan’s. “New cartridge.” The humanoid morphed into an orange wedge and began firing wildly into the swirling cloud of static.

“Dude,” ‘90s Kid murmured softly, almost worshipfully. “I don’t even know how to thank you.”

“I could use some help, actually,” Dan replied, as a chunk of flickering substance charged past them. “This is about where the original plan ends.”

“Oh, right.” ‘90s Kid hunted in his pockets. “Ugh, bogus, I don’t have any of my guns with me!”

The wedge morphed back into a humanoid, this time with a white torso. “Check my pockets,” Dan insisted as a pair of grey squares appeared in his avatar’s hand. “I might have something you could use in there.”

“Yeah, sure,” ‘90s Kid agreed, although he wasn’t exactly sure where in that digital cubist shape the pockets were. It took two tries, and this sprite didn’t seem to have any weapons, either, as they dodged two more bursts of static half-entangled. Finally, his hand closed on something smooth and solid.

“Awesome!” he shouted as the block of black pixels resolved into a Genesis controller.

“You’ll have to plug it in,” Dan’s sprite yelled as it turned into a slightly more elaborate triangle and began firing again. “Just push it into the glitch matrix; it’ll interface with the code on its own.”

‘90s Kid found the plug end and shoved it into the lack of a floor beneath him. It seemed to work; the familiar Sega fanfare rang somewhere in the distance. An only slightly pixillated werewolf appeared in front of him; he settled his grip on the controller and launched the beast at the same vortex that Dan was firing at.

“Good idea,” Dan shouted, as his sprite morphed into a blocky, bulging-armed figure in orange and blue. “We’ll punch this sucker out!”

_STILL NOT A GOOD CHOICE, HUU-MAAN_ , rang the gonglike voice. _YOUR FISTS WILL NOT HURT ME._ It flung something that might have been the outline of a skull at him.

Dan punched it out of the air; a puff of loose pixels blew past them. “Crap, he’s right about that,” he grumbled. “Quick, throw me stuff!”

“Huh?” ‘90s Kid replied, but he reached into his own pocket and found something warm and soft there. He tugged it out; it was a red valentine made of three blocks, nearly the size of his hand once unfolded. Well, it wasn’t wrong. He tossed it towards Dan’s squared-off avatar, who punched it out of the air; it seemed to absorb itself into his cubic hands.

“Keep ‘em coming!” Dan called, as he punched another indistinct projectile down.

‘90s Kid tugged heart after heart from his pockets, tossing them towards Dan’s character while still directing his own 16-bit werewolf at the more solid bits of the surrounding static vortices. After about a dozen, his hand encountered something much harder; he withdrew a green cylinder, taller than it was wide.

“Spinach incoming!” he shouted, realizing who the character with the bulging arms and the blue hat must be.

“Excellent, my friend!” Dan replied, his character grabbing the simulacrum of a can from the air and downing its contents. Another familiar fanfare bleeped in the background as the cartoon sailor rushed forward and pummeled the flickering tornadic pillar along with the werewolf; the wall of pixels surrounding them began to fluctuate and waver.

‘90s Kid looked down at his controller, then slammed it twice against the flat of his hand. The werewolf vanished and was replaced in mid-swipe with a ninja with huge blue shoulder pads. “That’s more like it,” he grinned, as the ninja flung a blast of ice at the flailing vortex of static.

Dan’s avatar stepped back as the ninja unleashed a flurry of kicks. “We’ve got him on the ropes,” he crowed. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand old-school!” The blocky sailor was replaced with a single red square.

_YOU MUST BE JOKING_ , rang the gong-voice, but ‘90s Kid thought he heard fear. He could certainly see the familiar walls and shelves of the apartment through the hazy veil of static now; they were inside the bizarre shape, just inside the door and a couple of feet off the floor. ‘80s Dan stood behind him, almost close enough to touch on the other side of that veil, joystick in hand and a look of determination on his face.

The red square flexed, holding up a smaller square of light stone grey. “What do you call a glitch when it’s there on purpose?” Dan asked, arching one eyebrow.

The static didn’t respond, so ‘90s Kid did. “An Easter Egg,” he called back as the ninja pulled a 5-hit combo on the central swirling pillar.

“And here’s the original,” Dan said, as the red square charged the vortex. The flickering intensified; the cyclonic shape seemed to be blinking in and out of reality as the grey square approached. The walls of the cave-space tattered and vanished, leaving only the pillar of static, twisting faster and faster. 

‘90s Kid wrenched at the controller as the ninja landed another blizzard of blows. The vortex, still flickering, began to wobble in a very familiar pattern indeed. As the red square flung itself through the center of the vortex, ‘90s Kid mashed the buttons, and the ninja tore the column of static in half. “Fatality!” he crowed.

For a moment, the words “Created by . . .” hung in the air, then the pixels evaporated like smoke. The connectors for the controller and the joystick dangled in midair; ‘90s Kid dropped the couple of feet to the floor.

Dan caught him by the shoulders, steadying him as he landed more or less on his feet. “Are you okay?” he blurted.

“I’m fine,” ‘90s Kid assured him. “That was just a little extreme, is all.”

Something thumped heavily from the direction of the study. With a crash, Pollo, Linkara, and Linksano flung open the door and promptly tripped over each other, landing on the carpet in a heap. Without bothering to pick himself up, Pollo asked, “Is it gone?”

“I think so,” ‘90s Kid replied. “I mean, I don’t think it’s actually dead, fatality or not. But I think it went back where it came from, at least for right now.”

“My scans indicate that he’s correct,” Linksano added from the bottom of the pile, holding up a gadget with all lights blinking green. “Only residual energies remain.”

“Did it lock you guys in there?” ‘80s Dan asked, eying the doorframe.

“It time-froze us,” Linkara explained. “Literally, we saw it manifest itself in the den, and then an instant later we were all in the study, in exactly the same positions, listening to you guys yelling.”

“It’s another glitch-god-thingy,” ‘90s Kid explained. “It didn’t feel nearly as strong as the Entity, and I don’t think it got too far into my head this time. I think it was more of a badass than the King of Worms, though.”

Linksano shuddered. “Did it have any allies?” he asked. “Robots, servitors, things like that?”

“If it did,” Dan replied, “it didn’t bring them here with it.”

Resettling his hat, Linkara climbed to his feet and said, “We need to come up with a strategy before it comes back. But,” he continued, eyes darting from ‘90s Kid to ‘80s Dan and back, “I think we’ve got a little while. Why don’t we head up to the ship for a while and let you two have your evening back?”

“Good idea,” Linksano snickered. “The lab’s up there, anyway, and I need to take a closer look at these readings.”

Pollo righted himself, gave Linksano what might have been a glare, and turned back towards Linkara. “I concur. Entering and leaving a dimension are a drain on its resources, if nothing else.”

“Nimue,” Linkara called towards the sensor on the ceiling, “Transport the three of us up.” The familiar effect glimmered around them as they vanished.

‘80s Dan shook his head, grinning. “Not only is your life more exciting than mine,” he chuckled, “your robot is much more polite.”

“You should see the cybermats,” ‘90s Kid answered. He settled on the couch and patted the cushions next to him. “Come on, we’ve still got a movie to watch!”

Dan plopped himself down and slipped into the crook of ‘90s Kid’s arm. “Popcorn or no popcorn?” he asked, looking up and smiling.

“We’ll get pizza later,” ‘90s Kid assured him, slipping his arm all the way around Dan’s shoulders and reaching for the remote. 

When Linkara and Pollo returned, the two were nestled against each other under an afghan, sound asleep in front of an empty pizza box and a bright blue screen. Linkara shrugged, picked up ‘90s Kid’s cap from the floor where it had fallen, and tiptoed past, leaving them to their shared slumber.


End file.
